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“Ssshhh,” she said again, the sound almost a hiss. “Do not let anyone know. You mustn’t even say the word bakery in this house.”

“Because…?” he prompted.

“Because—ohhh, it is just too complicated.” She scrubbed a hand briefly over her forehead, then caught herself before she dislodged a pin. “I am my mother’s daughter in this room. On Harley Street, I am someone else. If the two ever meet, everyone will be furious and very offended and probably faint in the ratafia.” She inhaled, steadied herself. “Can you keep my secret?”

She looked up at him when she asked it. Properly this time. Her hand rested on his arm, light but persistent, as if she were anchoring herself as much as him. The absurd palm frond brushed his shoulder. Somewhere in the next room, a violin began to tune.

Something inside him…shifted. It was not a snap so much as a settling. As if a lock he had assumed was permanent had just quietly turned toward a new sort of forever.

He ought to have thought of consequences. Of titles, of scandal, of his mother’s face if she ever discovered that the woman she was weighing as a duchess had also been passing coin over a counter in an apron. He ought to have said, This is improper. This is dangerous. This is impossible.

He heard himself say instead, very simply, “Yes.”

Her fingers tightened on his sleeve. “Yes?”

“I can keep a secret, Lady Barbara,” he said. “In fact, I am required by duty to keep a great many. Yours will be better worth the effort than most.”

Her mouth twitched, almost a smile, then thought better of it. “You will say nothing?”

“Nothing,” he promised. “Not to your mother. Not to your aunt. Not to the Board. Not to…Wyndale.”

She frowned a little. “You speak as if you know him.”

“Better than I’d like,” he said. It was almost true in more ways than she realized. “But I assure you, Lady Barbara, he is not as indifferent to small kitchens as you think.”

She studied him, weighing that, weighing him. The lace at her cuff brushed his hand when she shifted. He had never been so acutely aware of such small things—the warmth of her, the clean line of her profile, the faint flush still high in her cheeks from nearly falling, the way her lips parted slightly when she concentrated.

In all his mother’s careful lists, in all the ballrooms and drawing rooms and whispered introductions, he had never wanted anyone the way he wanted to stand exactly here, exactly like this, and be the man she trusted not to say a word. He just wished she didn’t hate Wyndale quite so thoroughly.

“Very well,” she said at last. “I will continue to despise Wyndale in peace, and you will keep my secret. That seems a fair bargain.”

He almost laughed. “I am not certain he would agree.”

“Then he should not have written that circular,” she said crisply.

The words landed squarely in his chest. He had signed it; he agreed with her more than she could possibly know. He opened his mouth—he did not yet know whether for argument or apology—

“Wyndale!”

His mother’s voice cut across the drawing room like the crack of a whip, bright and unmistakable over the hum of conversation. Leinster’s cousin, no doubt. The Dowager never missed an opportunity to parade her son in front of useful people.

Chester saw Barbara’s head begin to turn toward the sound, saw the faint crease of puzzlement start between her brows. It would take one question—one careless Which Wyndale?—and everything between them would shatter before it had properly begun.

He was not ready to watch her discover that the man she despised on paper was standing two feet away with her hand on his arm.

“I ought to go,” he said quickly.

Her fingers loosened on his sleeve, as if she meant to step away, back into the blaze of chandeliers and his mother’s line of sight.

“Not that way,” he heard himself say. “Come this way instead. Just for a moment. The air will do you good after nearly falling on the—” he spared the pudding “—confections.”

It was not the invitation a duke ought to offer a lady at Darley’s dinner of all places. It was also the only one he trusted his tongue with. He offered his arm with deliberate formality, as if this were nothing more than a sensible turn about the terrace for a young woman who had almost swooned.

She hesitated. He could feel it in the fraction of silence before her weight shifted, in the way her gaze flicked toward the main doors where duty and curiosity both waited.

Then her hand settled on his sleeve.

“If I faint a second time,” she said, “you may blame the sea air instead of the pudding.”